So much for plans…

Wow it’s been about 3 months since I have posted, and reading my last post I was so optimistic about the winter ending and had all these plans that never materialized. Most of my plans did not come about because of cash flow, and my truck breaking down 2 times. I have had to put over $1000 into my truck for wheel bearings, breaks, u-joints, stabilizer bar and it’s not even over yet but it drives safe anyway. So with not having my truck and all my spare money going into fixing it, non of my plans became reality. My fence is not up but I can get about 400 or so feet of old farm field fence for free I just have to go about 100 or so miles to get it. And I need my truck running for that, anyway about all I have been doing is trying to stay out of the heat, gaming, puttering around the yard and well just the everyday stuff that comes up. I have also moved my entire house around because this past winter I froze because I burn wood and the room that I had my woodstove in had 12′ ceiling’s so all the heat went up to the ceiling. So I have been moving my furniture around and arranging my house to the “other” side of my house. I have a mobile home with an addition on each side of it so it is more house than mobile home, I have moved to the older addition which has only about an 8′ normal ceiling and most of the common areas are also in this addition like the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living room. I should be much warmer this winter because of this rearranging of my living space. I have also been playing the 20th Anniversary Final Fantasy on the PSP and have been really into it. I have the BradyGames Official Strategy Guide and have been really getting the full impact out of this game. I have been trying to just play a few games at a time so I can get into each more and not just skim through and not even appreciate the game. I have purchased a few game guides for some of the PSP games that I have and will add more about them later, I am trying to play catch up with this blog in this post so I am just hitting on most of the things that I have been doing. I now have 10 cats because my 2 females had kittens before I could get them fixed. I will have a post all about my cats at a later time, like I said I am just catching up. So I will end this post for now and hopefully post more often, both for anyone who cares to read my blog and for me. I like to look back on my blog posts and see what I was thinking and/or doing when I wrote them. I guess that’s what most people do with a personal blog, I am kind of new to the blogging thing so I am still learning about the reasons for posting or for not posting for that matter. Looking back on my last post in April all I could think of was So much for plans…

Spring Cleaning, fixing and comming back to life.

Well it’s finally spring and I have been getting outside more and enjoying the weather. I have a lot to do around my home because this past winter was a “HARD” winter, it was long and very very cold. And on top of the long cold winter I have had no running water for over 6 weeks. Yes my water froze up a couple times and then I would figure out the problem and get it unfroze and then it would happen again and well it happened about mid Feb and it just started to flow again 2 days ago. I found out it was unfroze because I heard water splashing around under my bathroom. I ran outside and sure enough the shutoff knob that brings water into the house was leaking. So I shut off the power to the well pump. I live in a mobile home that has an addition on each side of the “trailer” so most of my house is additions. I live by myself so I just had to deal with the ordeal myself, last year my wife and 2 step daughters lived with me and we had a water problem because the pump itself froze up, but I had it fixed in about a weeks time because I had to basicly rebuild my well pump at the cost of about $500 to $600 dollars and all was well once again, because it was hell for a while if you can imagine 3 woman without water for about a week or so. Anyway I now have the situation figured out and this summer I will rerun the water lines so they will be getting heat on them so this wont happen again. I don’t know if the people before me had this problem or if it was just a bad winter but if you can imagin 6 weeks without running water well that kind of gives you an idea of my last 6 weeks of winter. Every day was a camping trip for me yeha! Anyway I have a lot to do before the next winter comes so I don’t go through what I did this winter. I have lived in the rural northern Michigan for about 15 years now and I burn wood for heat with propane for backup. I like living like I do it’s kind of tech/hick, I have all my gadgets computers, game counsels, PDA’s, cell phones, cable TV/ISP and everything just like anyone else in the city has except I live in the coultry and by this summer I will have a small farm going. I have lived here for about 3 years and I have yet to get me a garden going and some chickens for eggs and well that’s about where I want to be this year. I also want to fence off my property so my dogs can run free I have about 1 acre. So I have a lot to do this summer to get my little farm up and running like I want it to, I will post some photos and video clips as the work progresses. Anyway I started this post because I am sitting at my computer and I really need to do some spring cleaning on it. I have WinXP and Ubuntu Linux on my box along with a 60 GB FAT partition that is shared by both for music and photos and such. But I want to clean up my hard drives and install Mepis 7.0 instead of Ubuntu. I love Mepis and have used it up until 6.5 when I tried to install it and for some reason I get an error message saying that the installation program cant find the mepis installation files on the CD. I just cant figure this out. The installation disk is recognized and goes into the installation then it just stops and says it cant find the needed files. So I am going to install Mepis 6.5 and maybe a few other distros to see which one I want as my default distro. I like trying different distros and they are changing so fast and getting better and better so fast it’s hard to keep up with them. So I am now Spring cleaning my Hard drives and will be partitioning my 60GB drive into oh maybe 3 different 20GB partitions so I can have 3 distros on it. Maybe Ubuntu, Mepis and oh Fedora or maybe Xubuntu, openSUSE or Mandriva oh hell I might even partition so I can have about 6 to 8 distros on it I don’t know we will see. In case anyone is wondering I use a boot manager called GAG that can boot up to 9 different OS’s. If you want to check it out it’s here: GAG. Well I need to get back to moving my files around and backing up my partitions to get ready for my Linux transformation, damn I hope I can get Mepis 7.0 to work it’s my favorite and I would just use it if all goes well. So if there are any Mepis users out there and you may be able to help me give me a hollar and help a “Mepis Lover” do some Spring Cleaning.

Keeping busy

I have not posted very much lately because I have been totally consumed with my new Nintendo DS. I learned of the “Homebrew” scene and bought me a “M3DS Real” Flash cart, if you want to find out what this is or want to read a great review check out this link: GBAtemp.net Basically what it is is a DS game cartridge that has a MicroSD card in it that you can load DS and GBA ROM’s on and play the games like you had the cartridge. I know that this might be considered wrong if you don’t own the game, but I am not going to go there in this post. I have got about 45 games on it at this time and have been trying all kinds of GBA and DS games. I really have been getting into playing the “Advance Wars” series and “Castlevania” series. You can also use the M3DS Real to play music, videos and view photos kind of like you can do with the PSP. If you are interested check out the link above. As far as the PSP I have been playing “Jeanne D’Arc” and “Field Commander” more than anything latly, but I would like to get back into “God of War: Chains of Olympus” if I could only get past “The Steed Shrine” level. I am at the beginning where the game save is and the “dial” on the floor and the 3 “arm” levers are located. I have went towards the large “face” on the other end of the walkway bridge, but I can’t figure out what to do or where to go from here. If anyone can help I would be grateful. I have also gotten me “Guitar Hero III” for the PS2 with the “Kramer” wireless guitar controller. I was playing my step daughters one day and on my way home I stopped and bought me the Guitar Hero III package and the “Guitar Hero” game (I thought they had the first GH). When I got playing mine I noticed that I was playing Guitar Hero III and not Guitar Hero (original) but oh well I now have the first and third one and I am sure that I will get the others as well. So yeah I have been keeping busy as far as gaming, and I have gotten outside a little and done a little work in the yard and on my home. But I just can’t wait to get back in my “Lazy-Boy” and back into one of my games. But it is getting nice out and I must get out of the house more, I have really gotten out of shape this winter. So me and my dog Gigabite are going to start hiking everyday a little at a time to get us both back into shape and ready for summer. I want to go hiking on some overnight hikes this summer so we have to get ready, damn I just putz around the yard a little and I am getting dizzy and out of breath. This is the worst shape I have ever been in, and I don’t like it. So I must get out of my Lazy-Boy a little more and head outside for some fresh air and exercise. That’s another thing I can’t wait for is the PSP GPS attachment. That will get me outside and hiking, then I can play a game, or watch a tech video or take some photos or video’s with the PSP when I am not hiking. Anyway that’s it for now, I don’t want to be up all night long and sleep until noon and miss the nice weather…er…no I can see by my little weather applet that it’s raining and supposed to rain most of the day so I guess I will get back to a game and fall asleep when ever I do it looks like it’s not going to be nice out today so I can just take my time getting up. But it’s supposed to be nice out Saturday high of 58, cool I think I just might go for a hike, get the leash Gigabite!

Is Winter ever going to end?

It was nice out for a couple of days here in mid Michigan, and I got out and did a little hauling of some scrap metal for a friend that does not have a truck. It was so nice to get out of the house and do something different. Now I am here a few days later and sick, my head is stuffed up and my throat is sore. And it’s raining and snowing outside, just lovely. If I did not own my gaming systems and games I don’t know what I’d do, at least I can play some games while I sit in the house and try to stay warm. But even games get old after a while and this winter has been a long one for me. I know some of you might be reading this and be saying or thinking “Get a frickin job loser!” but it’s just not that easy. I am disabled and on disability and there are not a lot of jobs that I could do in my current condition. I wont go into it right now, but I am limited in what I can comfortably do. So I spend my days and nights trying to figure out a new career choice for myself. I do want to get back into “Web Design” I have some schooling in it, but I really need some more classes and that’s another story. So I play games, and think about maybe learning to get into game design. The thing is I need to do something where I don’t have to stand or sit too long in one spot or lift heavy objects because of my back. But then I have other issues besides my back. Anyway I am really wanting to do something on the computer because I like it and I have an inclination for it. But I either must get some money or a grant to go back to school, or try to teach myself what I need to know and hope I can make a career out of that. Oh I am just so tired of thinking and trying to come up with a way to do what I need to do and winter just drags on and on and the more I think the more I get confused and the more I think, oh god just stop I am going crazy! This winter is really taking it’s toll on me and I need a change of pace. Hopefully when spring comes I can get out of the house and do some walking/hiking to get back into shape a little and let the open air and woods clear my mind, and help me formulate a plan on my next move on the path of life. Wow that feels good to just write down all that, I am learning why some people have blogs. This is kind of therapeutic to just put it all down for me and anyone else to see. I just might get something out of this long cold winter and all the thinking and figuring about what I should do next with my life. So I guess I feel good at the moment, but I still cant wait until winter is over and spring comes! Well I think I am going to go make me some dinner and then maybe play me a little “Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles” on my NDS, or maybe “Orcs & Elves” or maybe “God of War: Chains of Olympus” or “Jeanne D’Arc” on my PSP or “God of War” on the PS2 or maybe just go frickin crazy!!! Oh come on Spring!